To ? Burchell   August 1842.¹

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The noon of night saw me pacing the deck of the vessel, gazing at times on the Tusker revolving light,² sometimes it presented the appearance of a mere spark, then as it grew gradually larger it shed a lurid glare around; anon, bursting forth into a full blaze of brilliancy it cast its beacon flare far and wide.

High above stretched the waveless sea of heaven studded with its lustrous systems, the rays from the thousand stars pierced the welkin³ & while gazing on the spangled empyrean⁴ I could not help bursting forth in the sentiment and language of Byron;

‘Who ever gazed upon them shining

And turned to earth without repining

Nor wished for wings to flee away

And mix with their eternal ray?’⁵

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Here I stand with pencil in hand, leaning on the gunwall⁶ of the Ocean steamer;⁷ the mighty Atlantic urging his boisterous progeny – the crested billows – to wage war against the sides of the oak Leviathan⁸ which bears me on. On the West nought comes within my ken⁹ save the billowy waste, here and there bearing a snowy sail which ‘walks the waters like a thing of life’,¹⁰ far on the East rise the steep sides of old Snowdon.¹¹ How many reflections does it call forth! I had read of Llewellyn¹² when a child – where is now the clarion of the Chieftain which once aroused the sleeping echoes of the hills? where the many ‘mingled cries’ which once rung through its thunder torn crags? Silent all silent! Yet Snowdon is unchanged, it still frowns as in days of yore on the peasant’s cot which lies buried in its shadow, while the ephemeral day of those who were once lords of the hill has long since closed for ever.

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RI MS JT 1/11/3527–8

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